By Leigh Ann Hubbard
I forget how he worded it.
We were four strangers gathered around a cocktail table at this year’s LeadingAge conference. This friendly man in a bowtie, with a certain light in his eyes, asked, “What do you need right now?” I think that’s how he put it. Or maybe, “What do you need to accomplish what you’re working on?”
When the rest of us were asking, “Who are you with?” or talking about what our company does, he disarmed with that unusual question.
And I put it in my back pocket for later.
Soon enough, I’d learn that that’s how he approaches his entire career — focusing on other people’s wishes, so everybody wins.
His name is Allen Abbot, PhD. He’s vice president of philanthropy at Baptist Senior Family in Pennsylvania. We hung out in the Nashville hotel lobby after the party. You can hear the rattle of dishes being cleared in the background. Everybody winding down for the night — everybody except him. Here’s our conversation.
1. Philanthropy isn’t about getting funds.
It’s about making the funder’s dreams come true.
I help make dreams come true. That’s my job. We don’t just go out and ask for money. Fundraising is just a little part of what we do. We get to know people. We discuss their core values and some of the things that they would still like to make a reality, and then we make it come true. And they volunteer, and they give us their expertise, and yeah, they give money to make it happen too.
2. Residents can’t tip, but …
They can give the community the money.
The residents love to give to things that not only make their lives better and their community better, like capital programs and new things in programming, but they’ll also enjoy giving to the staff. By law, they can’t tip, and the staff cannot accept gifts from the residents. But we can take up a collection at the end of the year and distribute that to the employees as an end-of-year bonus, and it’s tax deductible because it comes from the foundation.
A single couple, years ago, made a gift of $50,000 to create a scholarship program for our employees in dining services. That was wonderful. We were able to give out a couple of scholarships a year, about $1,000 each. A couple of years ago, we expanded that to all employees, and we invited all the residents to participate. This year, we gave out 24 scholarships of $5,000 each.
A lot of our residents didn’t expect to live this long. They didn’t expect to have resources that they could do stuff with. But now there’s an opportunity to do that.
3. Conference not great for you? Maybe you can do something about it.
Also, there may be more senior living philanthropy professionals than you think.
First time I came to LeadingAge, I sought out other people who do what I do, and there were only like four or five of us here, and it was very depressing. And none of the workshops had anything to do — I wasn’t getting much out of it. And so, I started just networking and trying to find out, well, who are my peers around the country? Let’s meet up next year at LeadingAge and swap some resources, and we submitted some proposals for some workshops. This year, we had over 70 philanthropy professionals here and several workshops that addressed philanthropy directly and indirectly.
4. You will lose money when you start a philanthropy program.
But wait till you see year three!
This is a smart investment. Philanthropy is a big part of quality of life — being useful, being able to give back and to make a difference that will outlive their life. But it also pays for itself.
To start a good philanthropy program with a good philanthropy professional, you have to invest in it. First year, you’re going to lose money. Second year, you’re going to break even. Third year, you’re going to do much better than breaking even. Industry standard for an organized and established philanthropy program is the return on investment is for every dollar that you put into it, you get at least $3 back. Why would you not? Why not put a million dollars into philanthropy if it’s going to net you $3 million — gross you $3 million, netting too. That’s money that you could have for your organization, for your mission, that would improve the quality of life not only of your residents and your employees, but you could be making a difference in the lives of older adults in your entire community.
5. Another money loser? Fundraisers.
But they can still be useful.
Everybody loves events, but they don’t generate much money. You can have bake sales and bike-a-thons, but when you take the amount that you put into it and the resources, including the staff’s time that could have been spent meeting with donors privately, you’re losing money. For some events, the cost to raise a dollar is a dollar and a quarter.
For most people, when they hear the word “fundraising,” that’s what comes to their mind, because those are the things that are very public. And we know that, OK, there’s direct mail, and there’s peer-to-peer fundraising. Those things are what we call annual fund, annual cycle. And they are necessary to get some new people involved, but they generally don’t make any money. It’s the responsibility of the philanthropy professionals to build relationships with those donors, cultivate those relationships, to find out what they would like to accomplish with their gifts, and it leads to much larger gifts, including planned gifts.
6. Don’t tap a marketer to lead your philanthropy program.
Get somebody trained specifically in philanthropy.
If you’re going to invest in philanthropy, hire a professional. Don’t just pull somebody out of marketing. Good people, but it is a legitimate, credentialed profession. Indiana University, for example, started the first fundraising school in America. And now, the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University is where a person can go get a bacherlor’s degree in philanthropy, a master’s degree, two different doctorates! There are professional organizations, such as the Association of Fundraising Professionals. There’s the Planned Giving Counsel, who are specialists in creating complex and planned gifts — gifts of bequests, for example, gifts of trusts, gifts coming from an IRA or a charitable gift annuity. So work with a professional. You can still post these things on Indeed, but you might also want to look up those professional organizations in your area and work with them to help find the right kind of candidates.
The going rate for a good philanthropy professional is going to cost you $100,000 or more for salary and benefits. And then, on top of that, they need a desk, they need a chair, they need a computer, they need fundraising software. They need to have full access to the executive director and the CEO and the marketing team, and really need to be on the same level as your other senior managers.
And it takes time to build trust and relationships with the donors. In this case it’s mostly residents. So during that first year, they will spend a lot of time doing bake sales and toy drives and stuff like that just to raise visibility. But those are just paths to much larger and more meaningful gifts in year two and year three and beyond.
Bonus: Here’s how he got into philanthropy.
At age 2-and-a-half.
I started in philanthropy at age 2.5. When I was a child, I contracted a condition called Legg-Calve-Perthes. The top of the thighbone, there’s a ball that snaps into the pelvis. That ball disappeared. If you remember Forrest Gump — he was in braces? I had the same contraption on my legs.
My parents didn’t have money. The local foundation in Chattanooga, my hometown, paid for my health care. They would wheel me out on the stage for the telethon every year. I would look into the camera with the red light on, and I would say, “Hello, Chattanooga! My name is Allen.” And I would sing, or I would do whatever I needed to do just to be really cute. And there was a scoreboard behind my shoulder showing the donations that were coming in. The cuter I was, the faster it rolled.
And that’s where I first put together money and mission. I realized, people were giving money so that I could get my health care and I could walk and I could be better. The Siskin Foundation took me all around town for all kinds of wishing wells and ribbon cuttings and local newscasts. Eventually all that health care and the medicine and the prayers caused me to walk again. I’ve been fine ever sense.
And then I grew up in a family that was mostly ministry. They’re not making much money and depending on a lot of donations. So I learned a lot about how not to raise money and the ethics of raising money and the importance of stewardship — making sure that donors know where their gifts are going, that their gifts are accomplishing what they want to accomplish.
Eventually I went into ministry myself. Spent almost all of my career with the American Baptist denomination. Lived in many different parts of the country, worked with a lot of organizations. And fundraising has been part of it, but it’s been mostly philanthropy. Getting organizations strong, rebuilding the staff, rebuilding the board, rebuilding their support. Making sure that their mission is as good as it can be and that they’re telling the story.
Now, I’m back in Pittsburgh, working with Baptist Homes Foundation. Sure enough, some of my residents are Baptist ministers that I used to work with throughout my career, and now I serve them in a new way. There’s a certain satisfaction on a religious level for me, to be able to do that.
